Interlude
by Shiroiyuki3
Summary: What happens when Snape goes to visit the one person he never wished to see again? Rated T for some language and mature themes. One shot wonder.


As was his yearly custom, the man suddenly found himself standing in the dingy rundown mess which was Manchester, black cloak forsaken sometime earlier for a muggle sweater and slacks. Even though this particularly depressing section seldom fancied people anymore, Snape thought it best to dress the part. No use having a scene by the local drunkard or bum.

He quitted the alley of his arrival and worked up to a rather tatty side street where a sign just barely managed to declare the home of his youth. Spinner's End, longtime bane of his existence, although with the disgrace of age it now spoke of little more than 'Sin'. An oddly fitting proposal the man thought as he sneered his way beneath it.

This would certainly be his destination in a few hours but right now he would not stop.

It was here that summer, like all summers, would surely drag into fall, and he'd get absolutely nothing done in the quiet hell his past afforded him. Severus Snape was never thrilled to leave Hogwarts, even during these months of implied 'vacation'. He dreaded it as a child and even more so now when nothing but his own solitude and memories remained. Always, _always_ he fought to remember that soon enough he'd be back at Hogwarts and far away from here. It kept him sane enough.

But when he had to go see _her_, well, there wasn't a welcome-home party big enough to keep him from his thoughts. A day late he had to admit, as work kept him a bit too long. He didn't wish to make the journey on an empty stomach and a full mind, so he had stayed at Hogwarts an extra day and delayed the trip.

But it was on this one day a year – a required visit – that he traveled past his shack of a home and toward the heart of what used to be a profitable cotton mill town. It was now far from its former glory of course, with the darkened thumb of its central chimney leaning dangerously close to falling over for good. The streets were grey with neglect and rubbish collected anywhere the craggy mess allowed. Even the air was dirty here, and almost unconsciously Snape tried to hug close the cloak no longer around him.

He ducked beneath a twisted shell of a fence, so much like a clump of barbed wire, and noted with distaste the way its raw edge caught his sweater. He'd have to fix the snag later but for now he couldn't risk being seen with a wand. Any locals crazy enough to still be locals would have already noticed someone walking about; had he magic it would be impossible to disguise.

With a frown the man decided to take the long way around an upcoming playground, not wishing to damage his heart further than necessary. Directly between his hell and his destination that swing set waited like the grim reaper, wishing for him to chip off a few more pieces of his soul and visit again. Snape shook his head.

Instead he climbed down into a cement waterway that, like this ghost of a town, had taken to drying up with dust years before. Now only the random rat remained, and many a rodent had already squeaked its protest as Snape made his way through the narrow tunnel. Up ahead, a few hundred meters or so, he came across a rusting ladder which at one point would have allowed a worker access. With the four or five feet of water gone, the ladder was now too high and the man had to hoist himself up using the first rung. Its sharp rusted angles cut into his hand but he continued to climb.

Once past, Snape brushed down his clothing and rubbed away his callused finger's blood to focus on his current intention, feeling the bile of ages threaten his stomach once again. In the center of this dingy hub sat a shadow of a building, looming high and dark in the grey sky. On the outside it still looked the part of an old factory but had since become something else entirely.

An asylum, and one made of nightmares at that.

Unlike St. Mungo's, this was not a hospital. There was nothing cheerful or clean about it, nothing bright or fun. The workers – when they were actually attending their patients – never smiled or showed any sort of recognition to being part of a staff. The thin, unwashed dresses given to patients were covered in any number of unspeakable things and the smell wafting from those few windows still able to open could make a passerby sick on the spot. Snape had to catch himself several times from making ill on the broken walkway. There was, after all, a reason such a place had never been sanctioned by Parliament.

This rickety old prison was where one went to die, forgotten by their loved ones. Most of the time it was those very same 'loved ones' that committed them to this rotting hell in the first place to be rid of their stain on society. Little more than a repository for the insane, it was here Severus Snape, too, had sent someone to be forgotten long ago.

But once a year he was forced to remember her again.

Holding a handkerchief in front on his nose, Snape carefully climbed into the fallen threshold which once was a door and quietly searched the corridor for signs of life. At one point the factory had been given a budget for repairs and the corpse of linoleum still sat peeling beneath his feet, stained a curious shade of green from years of disregard. A few of the stark yellow fluorescent lights blinked madly overhead, threatening to take leave of their duty. The man took note of one or two fixtures hanging where old wires still kept them.

The reception desk, if one could call it that, sat unoccupied and splintered with age. Coffee rings crusted with mold dotted the counter and a stack of yellowed parchment had fallen into itself to create a chaotic mess. There was no bell to be seen, although assistance was not necessary. Snape continued down the corridor knowing exactly where he needed to go.

A few detached moans and a scream or two echoed solemnly from somewhere ahead, making him frown into his handkerchief. Down the corridor, open doors and rooms without doors at all revealed bodies festering and unattended. Snape didn't look at them and silently knew no one had in quiet some time. Some moved, as pitiful as that was possible, but most lay uncomfortably still. Their mouths hanging in silent frozen terror, limbs awkward and bent without – He walked a bit faster.

Swallowing deeply and adjusting the handkerchief, he turned the corridor and came to one door that was closed. It was here, staring at the splintered rough wood he came in contact with the first 'worker' he'd seen at all – a gangly old man with long bony hands and hairless head. Snape knew him not to be a patient instantly, although the demented toothless grin smeared across his face suggested otherwise. He wore a graying suit and nodded as well as he could, twitching fiercely in between.

"Ahh," was his crinkled airless greeting, "I knew you would come."

The strange old man sidled up to Snape with his shaking old gait and smiled like the snake that he was.

"Of all my patients, _you_ are the only one to keep your obligation."

Snape frowned and veered back to an impressive height. He was, after all, a full foot taller than this wrinkled old thing and certainly did not appreciate his smell. But the old man persisted and wrapped a bony hand around Snape's arm.

"She's been waiting for you, you know," he laughed hoarsely, a dry humorless thing on the edge of insanity. "No screaming for at least a day."

And with that, the old man wobbled and shook his way down the corridor Snape had only just come from, disappearing from sight.

A few moments later the creak of a door was heard and Snape slowly poked his head into her room. He would only just visit, a required visit, an hour – not even. He'd check on her and get it over with, go back to the house he loathed, and have what was certain to be a breakdown.

A yearly tradition he'd come to hate and fear with every fiber of his being.

In a crumpled mess she lay, dress stained a ghastly shade of vomit and hair uncombed and tangled with bits of odds and ends. Not even on the bed this time, he noted with disgust, the dilapidated floor her newfound comfort. She did not face him like so many visits in the past, but instead the only other piece of furniture in the room – a weathered old bureau, filled only with a small picture himself he added just to spite her and a few random knick knacks that she wouldn't hurt herself on. A small token of a life she'd never miss, not in her sad broken state.

Snape shook his head bitterly when she did not turn at the sound of his boots, creaking heavily on the unvarnished wood floor. He knew her to be in one of those _moods_ again, where anger would trump whatever mad idea fluttered in her head and she'd have a rare moment of clarity. Just long enough to blame him for ruining her life and marriage, something he heard everyday as a child.

"_Mother_," was his acidic snarl of annoyance, only exacerbated further when she did not move. "Get up; I know you are capable."

Furious, he nudged her silent form with his foot, cursing and gruff-faced at this tiresome routine. Not the first time she completely ignored him, only to later tear into him for being born at all. But she continued to be unresponsive, so he angrily left her to pace the room.

"How _dare_ you continue this childish charade! Acknowledge me, damn you, acknowledge me!"

But still his mother did not stir.

At the end of his own sanity he stomped over to the threadbare mattress and ripped its single sheet from the squatty frame. He paid for her keep, he paid for this asylum. He should owe her nothing for the wasted life she gave him, but still he paid. And still he kept his obligation.

"_Every year_ I come here and _every year_ you treat me still as if I were never born." He swerved around to address her once more, breaking the bed frame in his anger. "Just once do me the courtesy of at least _accepting_ you had a son!"

Silence.

With a strangled growl of frustration Snape crossed the small room to his mother, still prostrate on the floor. Her arms were folded beneath her with hands next to her heart but she didn't move. Only silence.

"_Goddamn you!_"

And with one last unchecked shred of anger he kicked her, moving her body just enough for him to see. And what Severus Snape saw made him fall to his knees.

Eileen was no more, freshly dead sometime within this day's time. The dry tears on her face had crusted and mingled with the bluish tint of her skin, but the process of decomposition had yet to tarnish her. And her hands, which once rested against her chest, now splayed free and apart on the floor.

Snape was too shocked to cry, too angry to move. All the while he had screamed and ranted his mother had been dead. And all the while he hadn't noticed that in her hand she clutched the one thing he'd never imagined.

His picture.


End file.
